Responding to Rawls’ pleas in Political Liberalism against appeals to comprehensive doctrines, be they religious or metaphysical, I argue that such constraints are inherently illiberal—and unworkable. Rawls deems political proposals inherently coercive and judges everyone in a democracy a participant in governance—thus, in effect, complicit in state coercion. He seeks to limit the sweep of his exclusionary rule to core questions of rights. But in an individualistic and litigious society like ours it proves hard to draw a firm boundary around (...) issues that raise core (constitutional) questions. The standards Rawls proposes seem oppressive in effect, their likeliest yield, a kind of doublethink, encouraging many citizens to cloak their deepest normative concerns in neutered language. I worry about the means by which Rawls’ ‘overlapping consensus’ might be attained, and about the exclusion (as metaphysical) of policy proposals in behalf of broadly conceived human goods. I find it suppositious in Rawls to presume the innocence of seemingly secular arguments while placing in the stocks the religious appeals critical to many, along with old and new metaphysical arguments that may seek to bridge the gap between religious and secular appeals. (shrink)

This is a new English translation of a classic work of medieval Islamic learning. In this rich allegorical fable the animals pursue a case against humanity. They rebuke and criticise human weakness, deny man's superiority, and make powerful demands for greater justice and respect for animals.

Philosophers like to speak of a “Euthyphro Dilemma” pitting divine fiat against a moral realism that soon fades to personal or social preferences. But Plato targets no such dilemma. The Euthyphro hints a complementarity of divine commands with human moral insights. Values are constitutive in ideas of divinity, and monotheism affirms only goodness in God. So, pace James Rachels, worship is not surrender of autonomy, as Saadiah and Maimonides' biblical and rabbinic ethics reveal. Chimneying more fairly models the dialectic of (...) religion with ethics than does the contrived conflict between putatively arbitrary divine commands and presumptively self-certifying human moral creativity. (shrink)

Boldly describing the mind as the idea of the body – and the body as the most immediate object of our thinking – opens the way to a solution of the mind-body problem that Descartes bequeathed to philosophers discontented with substantial forms: Thought and extension, being of different natures, cannot explain one another. But if the mind intends the body, the congruence of mental and physical events makes sense. The order and connection of ideas parallels the order and connection of (...) their objects. So thoughts can address the world; ideas, in fact, can initiate actions. The lively subjectivity and reflectiveness of ideas helps further, in overcoming skepticism, dissolving the barrier between our thinking and its intellectual objects. The causal interconnectedness of natural objects can thus motivate a level of coherence and system among ideas that speaks up for the correspondence of adequate ideas to what they represent. (shrink)

The Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethren of Purity), the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity based in Basra and Baghdad, hold an eminent position in the history of science and philosophy in Islam due to the wide reception and assimilation of their monumental encyclopaedia, the Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity). This compendium contains fifty-two epistles offering synoptic accounts of the classical sciences and philosophies of the age; divided into four classificatory parts, it treats themes in mathematics, logic, (...) natural philosophy, psychology, metaphysics, and theology, in addition to didactic fables. The Rasa'il constitutes a paradigmatic legacy in the canonization of philosophy and the sciences in mediaeval Islamic civilization, as well as having shown a permeating influence in Western culture. The present volume is the first of this definitive series consisting of the very first critical edition of the Rasa' il in its original Arabic, with a complete, fully annotated English translation. This epistle, The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn (Epistle 22), prepared by Professors Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor, is arguably the best known, on account of its prominent ecological fable which casts the exploited and oppressed animals pursuing a case against mankind. Perhaps yet more relevant in modern times, the Ikhwan demonstrate the arrogance of man's claim to superiority, in contrast to the animals' pious understanding of their respective roles within nature. The fable complements and expands upon the short exposition on zoology featured at the beginning of the epistle. (shrink)

This work is based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures, which Lenn Goodman was invited to deliver in 2005. Goodman was asked to speak about the commandment to 'love thy neighbour as thyself' from the standpoint of Judaism.

the philosophers in the West, none, perhaps, is better known by name and less familiar in actual content of his ideas than the medieval Muslim philosopher, physician, minister and naturalist Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known since the days of the scholastics as Avicenna. In this book the author, himself a philosopher, and long known for his studies of Arabic thought, presents a factual account of Avicenna's philosophy. Setting the thinker in the context of his often turbulent times and tracing the (...) roots and influences of Avicenna's ideas, this book offers a factual philosophical portrait. It details Avicenna's account of being as a synthesis between the seemingly irreconcilable extremes of Aristotelian eternalism and the creationism of monotheistic scripture. It examines Avicenna's distinctive theory of knowledge, his ideas about immortality and individuality, including the famous "floating man argument", his contributions to logic, and his probing thoughts on rhetoric and poetics. (shrink)

Tracing the course of thought, action, and expression in the golden age of Islamic civilization, L. E. Goodman's Islamic Humanism paints a vivid panorama that departs strikingly from the all too familiar image of Islamic dogma, authoritarianism, and militancy. Among the poets and philosophers, scientists and historians, ethicists and mystics of Islam, Goodman finds a warm and vital humanism, committed to the pursuit of knowledge and to the cosmopolitan values of generosity, tolerance, and understanding. Drawing on a wide range of (...) writings, from love poetry to pietism, to satire, to history and metaphysics, and on to hunting, music and the dance, clothing, politics, and the marketplace, Goodman discloses the rich texture of classical Islamic civilization-its distinctive problematics and the space it left for the talents and creativity of the individual. His philosophic openness and easy familiarity place Islamic humanism securely in its larger context, revealing clearly what is of universa and abiding vitality and interest. In place of stereotypes, suspicions, and unease, Goodman sets out concrete and detailed expositions and explorations of Islamic thought and experience as seen through the eyes of the participants themselves. His engaged but sympathetic readings penetrate beneath the surface of the ancient texts to the humanistic values embraced by some of the greatest thinkers of Islam. As a result, Islamic Humanism does much more than remind us how much we owe to the intellectual achievements of Islamic civilization. The work is a significant contribution to Western understanding of Islam and to Islamic self-understanding of the profoundly humanistic dimensions of the Islamic tradition. (shrink)

Lenn Goodman argues forcefully that the Jewish tradition has a significant contribution to make to the general discourse on ethical issues. His goal in this book is to seek within the Jewish tradition, and in its interaction with other currents of Western thought, the foundations on which to build - without recourse to the privilege of "revelation" - public ethical theory.

This cogently argued and richly illustrated book rejects the dichotomy between the God of Abraham and the God of the philosophers to argue that the two are one. In God of Abraham, one of our leading philosophers of religion shows how human values can illuminate our idea of God and how the monotheistic idea of God in turn illuminates our moral, social, cultural, aesthetic, and even ritual understanding. Throughout Goodman draws on a wealth of traditional, philosophical, historical, and anthropological materials, (...) and particularly on a wide range of Jewish sources. He demonstrates how an adequate understanding of the interplay of values with monotheism dissolves many of the longstanding problems of natural theology and ethics and guides us toward a genuinely humanistic moral and social philosophy. (shrink)